Thursday, July 1, 2010

Nothing Hairy about "Wolf Lake"

I did not hear of 'Wolf Lake" through a friend or a website but directly from my television. I watched parts of it when SciFi would play a marathon block during their morning program between 2007-2008. This was before the stupid name change and I'm not aware if they play the episodes in morning blocks still. I have not seen of it this year but I could just be missing it. I never caught full episodes and was never sure what was going on because I never saw the first episode.

For some reason, I became interested in watching the 9 episodes that aired originally in 2001 on CBS and re-aired on networks such as UPN, SciFi, and Chiller. There was also an unaired pilot I read about but have not watched considering people have said it's completely different from the other 9 episodes. I found the episodes in a torrent and downloaded them to pique my interest and from what I can tell I really enjoyed "Wolf Lake".

The basic plot of the show was centered around a Seattle police officer named John Kanin (played by Lou Diamond Phillips) in search for his missing girlfriend, Ruby Cates(played by Mia Kirshner) which leads him to a small Washington town called "Wolf Lake". When Kanin arrives he's quick to notice something is not right about the town and is determined to uncover its secret. The secret is simple, Wolf Lake is home to none other than wolves.

It surprised me that this show didn't last, but I think supernatural ones don't do well unless involved with recent trends. Hence, the million vampire and werewolf related shows popping up on networks because of the Twilight phenomena. I find the story lines to be simple enough to follow while complicated enough to keep you interested.

By far the best character on "Wolf Lake" had to be Sherman Blackstone (played wonderfully by Graham Greene) who is the voice of reason among the residents of the town. I'm not completely clear if he's human or not because I swear he said he was 7, 000 years old in an episode. His character has the funny one liners and is hard to not like. He hung around the background of the story lines almost like a piece of wallpaper but if the show had continued probably would have ended up a big piece of the plot involving Kanin's investigation of Wolf Lake and Ruby.

Another aspect I enjoyed was the young adult plot line following the Sheriff's daughter, Sophia (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Luke Cates (played by Paul Wesley). Sophia was dealing with her transition from human to wolf or called "flipping" on the show. Luke is one of the kids in town that is a wolf and his father is the alpha male of the wolf pack. Sophia is afraid to embrace the wolf side of her along with her father Matt Donner (played by Tim Matheson) who was a wolf himself. Even in her hesitation, she turns to Luke for help and understanding on what it's like to embrace the wolf.

There are other story lines that are introduced but unfortunately do not get a resolve. I won't discuss the rest because I rather you (readers) check it out for yourself because it's worth a look. The cast is fairly well known and wonderfully played. The story is strong and it really made me interested in what could of happened. The 9 episodes ended in a pivotal point where many of the story lines were being branched out and possibly resolved. That's what fanfiction is for though, folks!

For those of you who haven't seen it, I recommend searching Google for a torrent because it should be simple enough to find. I was flummoxed that none of the episodes in the torrent were high quality, in fact they all looked VHS ripped for the most part. Since they aired in recent years there should be higher quality available somewhere. I wouldn't know a really good place to look but some of you might know better than myself.

I might (for the heck of it) do an episode break down if I feel like applying myself to it. It would be with pictures and all but I could leave LiveJournal for that.